To create the grim and gritty battle-zone gaming environment of Slayer for the action flick "Gamer," production designer Jerry Fleming drew on his early experience working for Robert Altman, where he was required to create fully dressed environments to allow the free-spirited director to shoot where he pleased. "Gamer's" Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor "are the first directors I've worked with since Altman where I had to create a 360-world and assume that everything is always on camera," Fleming says.

Reliever Yhency Brazoban is about to join a handful of rookies to have pitched in 100 games. Brazoban has been in 67 games this season, tying the Dodger rookie record for one season set by Duaner Sanchez, who made 67 appearances last year. But Brazoban also made 31 appearances in August and September last season, giving him a total of 98.

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Clayton Kershaw crossed the bridge at Dodgertown on Tuesday, walking from the minor league clubhouse into a world where he had trouble controlling the flow of his adrenaline and his mistakes were punished. But when it was time for the Dodgers' top prospect to walk back over the creek dividing the camp that night, he did so with the certainty that he could strike out batters at baseball's highest level.

The new year isn't even here yet, but already the folks at Buena Park-based Yamaha Corp. of America are thinking about what people will want to do with the computers they receive as holiday gifts. Yamaha hopes they'll play games. Really loud games. Yamaha, which is trying to make a name for itself in the computer speakers market, hopes people will want to upgrade their computers' generally substandard speakers.

flap v. to play video games. rel. flapper: a video gamer. in the zone adj. when a player is totally captivated by the game. "Check out Eddie's little brother--he's in the zone." lives n. number of chances or turns. 1-up n. extra life. Evolved from Pac-Man, whose display screen announced first player's turn as "1-up." shooter n. game based on shooting at attackers. Genre evolved from arcade games like Defender and Space Invaders. cheeze victory n.

To video game publishers, Mark Weiner is both a dream come true and a nightmare. The 23-year-old San Francisco Bay Area operations analyst likes to pounce on the latest blockbuster releases. He spends dozens of hours a week playing a wide range of titles. "I am passionate about games," he said. This should be good for game companies such as Activision Blizzard Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Ubisoft Entertainment, which publish many of the titles Weiner likes to play. But it's not welcome news.

November 15, 2011 | By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times / for the Booster Shots blog

Fourteen-year-olds who were frequent video gamers had more gray matter in the rewards center of the brain than peers who didn't play video games as much -- suggesting that gaming may be correlated to changes in the brain much as addictions are. European scientists reported the discovery Tuesday in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Psychologist Simone Kuhn of Ghent University in Belgium and colleagues recruited 154 healthy 14-year-olds in Berlin and divided them into two groups.

As if the dating scene weren't already stressful enough and the thought of unsolicited parental input didn't induce shuddering, NBC offers an entry in the surreality TV category to take it all to another level. "Meet My Folks" (premiering tonight at 10, then continuing Wednesdays at 8) is an odd cocktail of the 2000 movie "Meet the Parents," starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, and MTV's "The Real World," leaving the three male contestants both shaken and stirred.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America began selling its PSOne console with a portable liquid-crystal display to allow gaming on the go. The $200 package includes one controller. Other accessories include a $40 adapter that allows gamers to plug the console into their car's cigarette lighter. The LCD screen, which has been available separately since October, attaches to the PSOne console.